Coming Soon: Gavin Kaysen Opens Another Restaurant

Blue Point Restaurant Front

This is the worst kept secret in Wayzata, my neighbor’s barber told him about it and there’s been nothing but chatter around the bay for weeks.

Because yes, Gavin Kaysen has signed a lease and confirmed that he is opening his second venture in the old Blue Point restaurant in downtown Wayzata! It will not be a second Spoon and Stable, it will be a French bistro that is, as-yet, unnamed. “Maybe I should be sure about the name before I release it,” joked Kaysen (ahem, Merchant anyone?)

“Spoon and Stable is its own thing, there will never be another one, but we did want to do something else in another location and have been looking at spaces. When we walked into this one, it just felt right, I could see the potential, it was the same feeling I got when I walked into Spoon’s space, even though it was full of cubicles.” Just closing at the end of last summer, Blue Point has been sitting in Wayzata for some 30 years, before that it was Muffuletta on the Water. It has a very new England vibe, a nice wooden bar and some pretty good old bones, not to mention a sweet little courtyard patio in the back. “You can’t really find spots like this in the suburbs anymore. You can feel the history in it, the way that you can tell people have been having a good time here for a long time.” Personally, I can admit that when it was open it was my secret off-the-grid bar where I could hide out and drink Scotch with oysters close to home. But the place needs updating and some structural attention, so we'll have to be patient until 2017.

Blue Point Restaurant Courtyard

The courtyard behind Blue Point

While there is still a lot to figure out in the planning, Kaysen says he’s excited to bring his voice to the area, “Cooking French food is like going back to the roots of how I was trained. We’ll do seasonal food and have some solid staples on the menu, probably a roast chicken, maybe some escargot, but we’ll keep it fresh and changing, it won’t be stuffy or expensive. I want it to be accessible and feel good so that people can come back a lot.”

The spot will likely be open for dinner only first, adding lunch and weekend brunch eventually. “I’d love to do a bakery out of the front room, next to the street, maybe even a walk-up window where you can pick up food, boaters looking for take-out, that kind of thing. But we’re still in the process of design, we know we want to open up the space to that beautiful courtyard out back, but we’re just not sure how it will all flow. We also know we can't fight the lakeside patios on the other side of the street during summer, so we'll have to come up with a design that has its own draw, a unique feel. We did find the original wood-burning oven from Muffuletta all bricked up in the wall, it would be cool to figure out how to bring that back somehow.”

The new spot is owned by the same clutch of owners at Spoon and Shea will oversee design. I can honestly tell you that the town is psyched, and there are plenty of us who can't wait to have some chef-driven influence way out here in the boondocks. Something tells me, though, that it won't really be my off-the-grid spot anymore, but I'm cool with that.

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Food and Dining editor Stephanie March writes and edits Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s Eat + Drink section. She can also be heard Saturdays on her myTalk107.1 radio show, Weekly Dish, where she talks about the Twin Cities food scene.